What is Twitter? The social network simply explained

Twitter is now a household name to everyone. However, by no means everyone knows how the service actually works. Twitter translates as "tweeting" - and this already hints at Twitter's central feature.

Twitter is used millions of times a day and is one of the most important social networks in the world.

What is Twitter exactly?

Twitter is very well known in Germany, but is still far from being used as actively and intensively as is the case with Facebook, for example. For this very reason, it is worth taking a look at the features and characteristics of the service. Twitter is an online platform where users can post short messages and read the messages of other users.This basic principle makes Twitter a social network. Facebook, Google Plus or Instagram, for example, also fall into this category. However, Twitter offers numerous special features:

• Each tweet is limited to 280 characters. In addition, you can add up to four photos, a GIF or a video to your tweet.
• This limitation forces users to be as brief as possible. This results in a relatively high information content, especially compared to other social networks.
• For users, the character limit is also helpful, because they are not even tempted to write dissolute posts.
• Thanks to the function to retweet, so the sharing of a tweet, information can spread very quickly within the network.

Because of this characteristic, Twitter is perfect to spontaneously spread information, and as concisely and cogently as possible. Not without reason, Twitter has become one of the most important social networks in the world since 2006 and currently counts well over 300 million active users.